The Future of Only At IA

Hello everyone! It's that time of year again; my payment on the domain name has run out, and I have to decide whether I'm going to renew it or not. I had already decided that if the site was put to good use in my absence I would have no problem doing so, but there have been two non-introductory posts by anyone other than me, and it's been about a year and a half. As much as I'd love to keep the name, it's not worth it for the amount of use it's getting. Therefore, I've decided not to renew it. There is, however, some good news! The site will continue to exist, all the old context will still be around, but the name will revert back to onlyatia.blogspot.com. I'm posting this as far in advance of the change as I can so that people don't have trouble finding it, but in early November the current domain will no longer work.

That said, I'd still like the site to continue in whatever way possible. I'll still post to it when I feel like it, and I hope that the others do the same. Like I've said countless times before, I really enjoy writing for the site and reading what others have written. I hope to keep it interesting enough to make it worth checking back, and I look forward to seeing where we decide to go with it:)

The moral of the story is this: nothing much is changing, the web address will return to onlyatia.blogspot.com sometime around November 13, and I hope to see more content appearing this year than last year.

IAtionary: Portmantastic

Port-man-tas-tic [port-man-TAS-tik] adj.

1. Of or related to a well done or entertaining combination of two words; Have you guys seen xkcd.com/739? It's portmantastic!
2. Demonstrating the ability to improvise new and interesting combinations of words; A: So, do you think Kurt and Blaine will get together? B: I hope so, Klaine is so adorable! A: Ooo, portmantastic!

Antonym: Port-man-ter-ri-ble [port-man-TER-rih-buhl] adj.

1. Of or relating to a poorly-constructed combination of words; I keep trying to find a way to portmanteau "IA" and "Oberlin" but there are too many vowels at the beginning...it's portmanterrible!



It's been half a year since I've posted on OAIA, and I'll admit it feels weird to have been away for so long. Things are going great for me at Oberlin, and I thought I'd come back and share a little of my new, expanded vocabulary. You see, by complete accident I ended up living just downstairs from Sci-Fi Hall, an entire hall full of sci-fi fans, nerdy references and all the video games. I learned to speak Sci-Fi Hall pretty quickly, and a lot of the new words were either references that I needed to catch up on or awesomely meta words like "portmantastic." (Like, hey, did you know there's a word for "self-referential"? Yeah, it's "meta," like metalanguage or metaknowledge. The word on its own is still a neologism, but I love it nonetheless.) Anyway, I thought this would be an appropriate addition to the IA lexicon if it hasn't appeared independently in my absence, so I thereby justify putting it in the IAtionary.

Now let's address the other issue at hand; in the half a year, not counting semi-forced introductions, there has been one post. In total, I've written 97.5% of the posts in existence, though I've had sole ownership for about 80% of the time. And I'm 1/9 of the Task Force, so counting the time of each person separately, only 57% of the time has been mine. (See, I can still do math at 3:30 in the morning; I'm on college time.) Anyway, OAIATF people, I hope you pick it up a little. Meanwhile, I think I'll start posting once in a while again. I can't promise any regularity, but this has been fun and I've missed it. Obviously it won't be specifically IA stuff, but I'll pick out what I think applies best when I have time.

Calculator Fun!

First I'd like to say happy new year!  Congrats to me for being the first to post something cool now that Josh isn't updating.  I don't really have a story to this post, but I do have an explanation....of sorts.  So over a few weeks in Math Studies, I have taken pictures of some pretty cool calculator drawings that Zach Rich has created.  I believe the first one was Pikachu and then came the pokeball, followed by Jigglypuff and then the Dreamworks symbol.  Well, math is usually very easy, so many of us don't really pay attention to lectures and this is what we do to occupy our time.